Saturday, 24 December 2016

Current Affairs -Indian IAS Academy module-2

1.Hong Kong to withdraw visa-free
facility for Indians from January 23, 2017

·Hong Kong, a China-administered special
territory has decided to withdraw visa-free facility for Indians from January
23, 2017. This decision was taken on the ground to prevent illegal
immigration as number of Indian asylum seekers was on the rise.

·Over half a million Indians visit Hong
Kong for business, trade and holidays. Under the new rules, Indian travellers
will have to complete a pre-arrival registration.

·Such pre-registration would not be
necessary for those transiting through the Hong Kong airport without leaving
the airport transit area.

·Background Earlier, Hong Kong used to be part
of a block of countries that gave Indians unconditional visa-free entry.

·Indians were permitted to enter Hong Kong with
a valid passport for a period up to 14 days without a visa. However in recent
times, it was found that Indian nationals were overstaying in Hong Kong by
violating visa norms.

·Hong Kong’s unilateral decision came a
year after its government had sent a delegation headed by the Assistant
Director of Immigration from the Immigration Department and Hong Kong Police in
December 2015 to India.

·It had informed concerns about “illegal
employment” and “human trafficking” involving Indians in Hong Kong to India’s
External Affairs Ministry. They even had expressed concern that many Indians
taking up jobs even though Hong Kong does not allow visitors to work.

Visa Free Countries for India:

Country

Type

Bahrain

eVisa

Bhutan

No Visa

Bolivia

Visa on
Arrival

Cambodia

Visa on
Arrival

Cape
Verde

Visa on
Arrival

Comoros

Visa on
Arrival

Cote
d’Ivoire

eVisa

Djibouti

Visa on
Arrival

Dominica

No Visa

Ecuador

No Visa

El
Salvador

No Visa

Ethiopia

Visa on
Arrival

Fiji

No Visa

Gabon

eVisa

Georgia

eVisa

Grenada

No Visa

Guinea-Bissau

Visa on
Arrival

Guyana

Visa on
Arrival

Haiti

No Visa

Indonesia

Visa on
Arrival

Jamaica

No Visa

Jordan

Visa on
Arrival

Kenya

eVisa

Laos

Visa on
Arrival

Madagascar

Visa on
Arrival

Maldives

Visa on
Arrival

Mauritania

Visa on
Arrival

Mauritius

No Visa

Micronesia

No Visa

Moldova

eVisa

Myanmar

eVisa

Nepal

No Visa

Palau

Visa on
Arrival

Rwanda

eVisa

Saint
Kitts and Nevis

No Visa

Saint
Lucia

Visa on
Arrival

Saint Vincent
and the Grenadines

No Visa

Samoa

Permit
on Arrival

São
Tomé and Príncipe

eVisa

Senegal

Visa on
Arrival

Seychelles

Visa on
Arrival

Somalia

Visa on
Arrival

Sri
Lanka

No Visa
but special permit required

Tanzania

Visa on
Arrival

Thailand

Visa on
Arrival

Togo

Visa on
Arrival

Timor-Leste

Visa on
Arrival

Trinidad
and Tobago

No Visa

Tuvalu

Visa on
Arrival

Uganda

Visa on
Arrival

Vanuatu

No Visa

Zambia

eVisa

Zimbabwe

eVisa

Bhutan

No Visa

Hong
Kong

No Visa

Antartica

Visa on
Arrival

South Korea

No Visa

FYRO
Macedonia

No Visa

Svalbard

No Visa

Montserrat

No Visa

Turks
& Caicos Islands

No Visa

2.GARV-II
App launched

The
government has launched GARV- II app to track Rural Household
Electrification. This is the next step in Government of India’s aim to
provide access to electricity to all households in the country.

About
the scheme

§Under this module, village-wise and habitation-wise
base line data on household electrification for all States, as provided by
them, has been incorporated.

§The data in respect of about 6 lakh villages, with
more than 15 lakh habitations having 17 crore people, has been mapped for
tracking progress on household electrification in each of the habitations of
these villages, which is a remarkable progress over the previous GARV App.

§In the earlier version of the ‘GARV’ App, launched
in October 2015 for the effective and efficient monitoring of village
electrification programme, the data of only 18,452 un-electrified villages had
been mapped and a 12-stage milestone-based monitoring mechanism was put in
place.

§The status of village-wise works sanctioned under
the DeenDayalUpadhyaya Gram JyotiYojana (DDUGJY) and release of funds to the
States for these projects has also been mapped in ‘GARV-II’ to monitor progress
of works in each village. The progress is required to be updated by the
implementing agencies of the States on day to day basis. All data would be made
available in public domain to ensure transparency, enhance accountability of
various stakeholders and facilitate view of near real time progress.

§This app is an important part of the ‘Digital India
Initiative’ of Government of India and will contribute in further development
of the villages. In order to bring more transparency, the Minister
asked the Power Ministry officials to place more details regarding discoms,
tenders and contracts in public domain.

§For places, where internet facilities are not
available, information regarding rural electrification projects like
contractor’s name, amount sanctioned by the Government, deadline of the project
etc. will be put on boards on the working sites in villages. This will help
people in better monitoring of Government’s work.

§The National Commission for Protection of Child
Rights (NCPCR) of Ministry of Women and Child Development has been conferred
the Skoch Silver and Skoch Order-of Merit award.

§The two awards were received by NCPCR for applying
technology to develop an electronic drop box, POCSO e-Box for registering
complaints on Child Sexual Abuse.

§The competition saw more than 3000 participants and
NCPCR’s project, POCSO e-box was considered among the top 30 entries.

§POCSO e-box is a unique endeavour by NCPCR for
receiving online complaint of Child Sexual Abuse directly from the victim. The
system maintains confidentiality of the victim/ complainant.

§Through a well defined procedure complaints are
directly followed up by a team which counsels the victim, providing further
guidance for required legal action. Through a short animation film embedded in
the e-box it assures the victim not to feel bad, helpless or confused as it’s
not her fault. With the e-box, it is easy to register complaint through a
step-by-step guided process.

About National Commission for Protection of
Child Rights:

The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights is
a statutory body set up in 2007 under Commissions for Protection of Child
Rights Act, 2005.

Objective of this commission is to protect, promote and
defend the child rights in India including the rights adopted in the United
Nations Convention on the Rights of Children, 1989, ratified by India in 1992.
(This convention defines child as a human being below 18 years of age)

4.Alarming rise
in forest fires across India

·According to report submitted by
Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science and Technology, there is alarming
rise in forest fires across India. It says that the number of forest fires have
touched 24,817 in 2016 from 15,937 fires in 2015.

· It shows alarming rise 55% in the past year.
The report primarily focuses on the prevention and containing of fires in the
Himalayan forests spread across Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Jammu and
Kashmir.

Findings
of Committee

·There increase in forest fires is seen
even though 2015 was considered a drought year. But there is decline in
frequency of forest fires by around 16%. The three central States of
Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Odisha contribute a third of the forest fires.

·Madhya Pradesh has seen a nearly
ten-fold increase in forest fires, from just 294 in 2015 to more than 2,600 in
2016. In Himachal and Uttarakhand, over 17,502 acres have been ravaged in 2016
due to forest fires, a rise of over 171%.

·Large number of posts of front line
forest staff were lying vacant, while fire-fighting equipment is rudimentary in
many cases. Recommendations National policy on managing forest fires must be
framed. Replacing pine reserve forests areas with “broad-leaf” plants.

·Procurement of sweeping machines to
clear roadsides of Chir pine needles. Advocating large-scale incentives and
programmes (including under MNREGA) to collect pines for use as fuel, and other
incineration.

About
the committee

·The committee was formed after a series
of devastating forest fires earlier in the year 2016 including the prolonged
one that had charred 4,000 hectares of forest land across 13 districts of
Uttarakhand in May 2016.

·The committee was headed by RajyaSabha
MP RenukaChoudhary.

5.Scientist observed
the creation of ice crystals on individual atmospheric particles in the
laboratory

·US based researchers for the first time
have observed the creation of ice crystals on individual atmospheric particles
in the laboratory.

·This observation gives an unprecedented
glimpse at most critical but least understood parts of the process of cold
clouds formation.

·For this, they replicated suitable
conditions found high above Earth’s surface at an altitude of about 6
kilometres where cirrus clouds form in the sky due to ice crystals. They
witnessed formation of ice crystals in highly confined climate-controlled chamber
in which atmospheric temperature, pressure and humidity conditions were
maintained similar in atmosphere.

· For recreation of ice nucleation, researchers
also used extremely small particles of a clay mineral called kaolinite. These
particles were just 2–3 microns in size, or less than one-tenth width of a
human hair.

·The kaolinite was then placed in a
highly confined climate-controlled chamber of very small size, which was
photographed by an environmental scanning electron microscope. It was found
that nucleation occurred at temperatures as low as minus 68 degrees Celsius
with relative humidity from about 70 to 80%.

·Natural process of heterogeneous ice
nucleation At an altitude of about 6 kilometres, relative humidity is high and
temperatures are very low. It forces water vapour to collect on any small
particles floating in the atmosphere, before freezing in place as an ice
deposit. In the atmosphere, such airborne particles could be almost anything,
including volcanic ash, aircraft emissions, or even microbes.

Atmospheric particulate matter

Atmospheric particulate matteralso known
asparticulate matter(PM) orparticulates– are microscopic solid or liquid
matter suspended in the Earth's atmosphere. The termaerosolcommonly refers to
the particulate/air mixture, as opposed to the particulate matter alone.Sources
of particulate matter can be man-made or natural. They have impacts on climate
and precipitation that adversely affect human health.